Horizons: Creating the World We Want to Live In

Welcome!

Like the San Francisco Bay Times, Horizons has a long history of celebrating our community and bringing to the forefront important issues that we face.

Media organizations have experienced enormous changes since the emergence of the internet and social media. Many papers and magazines dedicated to LGTBQ issues have folded or have simply moved online. But we should all be proud that the Bay Area continues to have publications that keep our community informed and entertained, and we are grateful to a long and continued partnership.

At Horizons, we understand the importance of an informed community and how the media plays an integral role in a well-functioning, viable democracy. The media assures that citizens are well informed about community issues, that they participate in various ways in contributing to work around those community issues, and that the quality of life is improved as a result of their involvement.

On behalf of our staff, our Board of Directors, and our thousands of supporters, we congratulate the San Francisco Bay Times on its historic 40th Anniversary year.

Roger Doughty,
President, Horizons Foundation

Creating the World We Want to Live In

By Roger Doughty

In 1980, a group of leaders at the LGBTQ Golden Gate Business Association wondered how to have a stronger impact on their community, especially in helping nonprofits that were just beginning to bloom in the decade following Stonewall. They knew that for our movement and these nonprofits to succeed, they would need ongoing financial support from our community because virtually no corporations or funding institutions supported LGBTQ causes.

They formed Horizons Foundation, the nation’s first community foundation dedicated to improving the lives of the LGBTQ community. The idea was a simple one, but breathtaking in its scope. The foundation would be funded by the community and for the community. It would not have to rely on a single donor but instead on a pool of donors who, collectively, could provide the needed resources for these organizations to grow. It would have enough resources to respond to the ever-changing needs of the community.

The foundation’s grants, which recently surpassed more than $40 million in lifetime giving, did more than just follow the growth of the LGBTQ community. They helped to chart its course. During its first decade alone, Horizons seeded some of the most influential LGBTQ organizations of our time, including the National Center for Lesbian Rights (NCLR), the Gay Games, and Project Open Hand. Horizons’ birth predated the appearance of HIV by only a short time. In keeping with the pattern of early seed funding, Horizons made history in 1982 as the first foundation in the U.S. to support an AIDS service provider: the Kaposi’s Sarcoma Research and Education Foundation, now known as the San Francisco AIDS Foundation.

More recently, in response to today’s needs, Horizons gave early grants to Transgender Law Center and the one-year-old Oakland LGBTQ Community Center, as well as dozens of other organizations across the nine-county Bay Area.

Current events demonstrate just how fragile LGBTQ rights continue to be and that opposing forces are steadfast in their commitment to overturn the rights we’ve gained. At the heart of Horizons’ mission is creating a world where young people can thrive in safe and supportive homes and schools, where our community’s elders can age with dignity and in community, where our histories will be told, and where we can safeguard and expand the gains we’ve all fought so hard to win.

Horizons’ Reach Beyond the Bay Area

The Bay Area is, arguably, the epicenter of the LGBTQ movement. Many of our movement’s brightest ideas and most cherished institutions began life here. What happens in the Bay Area matters for queer people across the U.S. and, indeed, across the world.

Horizons Foundation, as the world’s oldest community foundation dedicated to the LGBTQ community’s needs, is increasingly playing a central role beyond our 9-county Bay Area. As the home to Give OUT Day, an annual online day of giving benefiting LGBTQ nonprofits, Horizons works in partnership with more than 600 organizations in all 50 states and D.C. In addition to providing the platform and technology for the day of philanthropy, Horizons offers marketing and communications guidance to each organization, enabling organizations to maximize their abilities and understand the best approaches to engage with their public.

Give OUT Day’s 2018 total smashed the previous record, raising just shy of $1 million. 2018’s total marked a 28.2% increase over last year’s fundraising total and a 32.9% increase in the number of donors participating.

As a 2018 donor said: “Everyone is at danger from the current administration; this is one way I have to fight back and protect the people I love—which is everyone.”

Internationally, through the Global Faith and Equality Fund (GFEF), Horizons is playing an active role by strategically funding grantee partners whose work is at the intersection of LGBTI rights, reproductive justice, and faith in Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean.

Supported by an anonymous donor, the 17-year initiative recently provided significant resources in the Sexual Minorities Uganda (SMUG) vs. Rev. Scott Lively case. SMUG sued Scott Lively, a U.S.-based anti-gay religious fundamentalist, for his role in the persecution of LGBTI people in Uganda—in particular, his active participation in the conspiracy to strip away fundamental rights through anti-gay legislation (also known as the “kill the gays bill”). Lively is also the author of Pink Swastika, which claims that rather than being victimized by the Nazis, gay men in Hitler’s inner circle helped to mastermind the Holocaust.

Horizons’ GFEF also funds projects focused on reproductive-justice and elevating accepting and LGBTQI-affirming faith leaders to combat the hate exported by U.S.-based fundamentalist organizations and individuals to the Global South.